“WHO?” she commanded.
A few heads shook.
“Well, it’s YOU, children,” she shouted angrily.
“What? Why?” asked Judy, slightly alarmed. “What did I do wrong?”
“Don’t be dense, Judy,” Mrs. Mudford said. “For heaven’s sake!”
“My mom says she’s not giving the school another cent,” said a crusty-looking boy named Roger.
“Who said anything about money, Roger!” Mrs. Mudford shrieked.
“Can I see the tree?” asked Madeline.
“May I,” thundered Mrs. Mudford.
“May I?” asked Madeline.
“NO, YOU MAY NOT,” Mrs. Mudford screeched, folding the paper into quarters, as if the mere act of folding would make it Madeline-proof. “This tree is not for you, Madeline; it is for your mother. Now children,” she said, trying to find her way back to control, “organize yourselves into a single-file line. I will pin the paper to your shirts. Then it will be time to go home.”
“My mom wants you to stop pinning stuff on me,” said Judy. “Says you’re making holes in my clothes.”
Your mother is a lying whore, Mrs. Mudford wanted to say, but instead she said, “That’s fine, Judy. We’ll staple yours on instead.”
One by one, the children allowed Mrs. Mudford to affix the note to their sweaters and then filed out the door, where, just past the doorjamb, they instantly gained speed like small ponies that had been tethered for hours.
“Not you, Madeline,” she said. “You stay here.”
* * *
—
“Let me get this straight,” Harriet said as Mad revealed why she was late. “You had to stay behind because you told your teacher that people are animals? Why did you say such a thing, honey? It’s not very nice.”
“It isn’t?” Madeline said, confused. “But why? We are animals.”
Harriet wondered to herself if Mad was right—were people animals? She wasn’t sure. “My point is,” she said, “it’s sometimes better not to argue. Your teacher deserves your respect and sometimes that means agreeing with her even when you don’t. That’s how diplomacy works.”
“I thought diplomacy meant being nice.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Even if she’s telling us wrong stuff.”
“Yes.”
Madeline chewed her lower lip.
“You make mistakes sometimes, don’t you? And you wouldn’t want someone to correct you in front of a lot of people, would you? Mrs. Mudford was probably just embarrassed.”
“She didn’t look embarrassed. And this isn’t the first time she’s given us bad information. Last week she said God created the earth.”
“Many people believe that,” Harriet said. “There’s nothing wrong with believing that.”
“You believe that?”
“Why don’t we take a look at this note,” she said quickly, unpinning the paper from Madeline’s sweater.
“It’s a family tree project,” Madeline said, clunking her lunch box on the counter. “Mom has to fill it in.”
“I don’t like these things,” Harriet muttered as she studied the badly drawn oak, its branches demanding names of relatives—living, lost, dead—one related to the other by marriage, birth, or bad luck. “Nosy little sapsucker. Did it come with a subpoena, too?”
“Should it have?” Madeline asked, awed.
“You know what I think?” Harriet said, folding the note back up. “I think these trees are a poor attempt to feel like you’re somebody based on somebody else. Usually comes with an invasion of privacy. Your mother is going to hit the roof. If I were you, I wouldn’t show this to her.”
“But I don’t know any of the answers. I don’t know anything about my dad.” She thought about the note her mother had left in her lunch box that morning. The librarian is the most important educator in school. What she doesn’t know, she can find out. This is not an opinion; it’s a fact. Do not share this fact with Mrs. Mudford.
But when Madeline had asked her school’s librarian if she could point her toward some yearbooks from Cambridge, the librarian frowned, then handed her last month’s copy of Highlights magazine.
“You know plenty about your father,” Harriet said. “For instance, you know that your father’s parents—your grandparents—were killed by a train when he was young. And that he went to live with his aunt until she hit a tree. And then he went to live in a boys home— I forget the name but it sounded girlish. And that your father had a godmother of sorts, although godmothers aren’t family tree material.”